1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a document managing apparatus for managing a correspondence relationship between image data of an input document and a printed document, and more specifically, a document managing apparatus, a document managing system and a document managing method, which are capable of identifying an input document based in a printed document.
2. Description of the Related Art
The more information systems and networks prevail, the more exchanges of information among companies and among departments in a company are conducted in a mode of sending and receiving electronic documents via networks. However, a mode of exchanging information with fax is still popular because of ease in handling paper media and a high penetration of telephone circuits and fax machines as the infrastructure. There is introduced an information entry system called an image workflow, which uses handling of the image data as digital data when a received fax is processed for acceptance or the like. Therefore, it becomes possible to efficiently confirm the content of an application with a received fax in a confirmatory operation. However, although image data may be displayed on a display in the image workflow, a reduced display is desired in displaying an ordinary fax image (a format size of A4 in 200 dpi) on an ordinary display because of limits of the size and the resolution of an ordinary display. Then, visibility becomes insufficient. Therefore, the image workflow does not sufficiently prevail.
For example, Patent Document 1 discloses a technique of easily associating electronic documents with paper documents in a workflow using both of the electronic documents and paper documents. Patent Document 1 discloses a business support system of storing document identification codes which enable a user to uniquely identify documents produced along with actions of the work flow, control information for controlling the document and document links for accessing the documents. Further, Document 1 discloses a business support system which attaches control information to the documents produced along with the workflow.
Further, Patent Document 2 discloses techniques by which, when an input image and a form image are synthesized and printed, the form image is encoded, the synthesized image having the encoded form image embedded in it is printed, the synthesized image formed by synthesizing the form image is scanned and the form image is restored, printed and registered. According to Patent Document 2, the convenience of printing using the form image is improved, and the capability of reusing the form image is also improved.
Patent Document 3 discloses a document processing apparatus for printing a form used in a workflow system using paper documents, handwriting characters or the like in the form, and scanning the form by a scanner. With this document processing apparatus, it is determined whether an entry area is filled in conformity with a form definition identified by an ID embedded in the form, and an output is obtainable in correspondence with the filled content in the entry area. Further, the document processing apparatus is capable of instructing to synthesize another form and a content written by hand, as one output mode.
The image workflows may have a problem that the capability of handling the image data is not sufficiently considered. For example, it is not possible to designate a part of a document even though access to every document is possible in the business support system disclosed in Patent Document 1. When only a part of the image data is necessary, it is not possible to extract only that part. Therefore, when the number of manuscripts is plural, it is unavoidable to print all of the image data in the manuscripts, and the consumption amount of papers becomes huge.
In the technique disclosed in Patent Document 2, since the data to be restored are encoded and embedded, it is unnecessary to prepare a system of managing the restoration data. Meanwhile, the size of the encoded and embedded area is determined, and all of the data to be restored are not always embedded. It is possible to print the written content into plural forms in the document managing apparatus disclosed in Patent Document 3. However, restoration of original data is not considered. Therefore, the convenience is spoiled when all of the image data become necessary.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2007-200136    Patent Document 2: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2006-74439    Patent Document 3: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-293221